A Violet Season - Paperback

by Kathy Leonard Czepiel (Author)

The "engrossing" (Booklist) story of a mother who must make questionable sacrifices as her family fights for the survival of their violet farm in turn-of-the-century upstate New York.The violet industry is booming in 1898, and a Hudson Valley farm owned by the Fletcher family is turning a generous profit for its two oldest brothers. But Ida Fletcher, married to the black sheep youngest brother, has taken up wet nursing to help her family, and her daughter, Alice, has been ordered by her father to leave school and find work or an early marriage. As they near the brink of losing their share of the farm, the two women make increasingly great sacrifices for their family's survival, which will take them from their small farming community to the dangerous streets of New York's Lower East Side and set them against one another in a lifelong struggle for honesty and forgiveness. Told through the voices of both women against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century America, Violet Season is the story of an unforgettable mother-daughter journey in a time when women were just waking to their own power and independence.

Author Biography

Kathy Leonard Czepiel is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and teaches writing at Quinnipiac University. Her short fiction has been published in numerous journals including Cimarron Review, Indiana Review, Calyx, Confrontation, and The Pinch. A native of New York State's mid-Hudson Valley, she now lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children.